Blog series: Vertical development – part 1. Leadership as something that belongs to individuals is an outdated idea. The future calls for leadership that lays to rest the hero myth of the individual leader: someone who has seen the light and can lead the way. From now on, leadership must be understood as a dynamic relational phenomenon.
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Leadership as something that belongs to individuals is an outdated idea. The future calls for leadership that lays to rest the hero myth of the individual leader: someone who has seen the light and can show the way. From now on, leadership must be seen as a dynamic relational phenomenon. It arises and moves between people depending on, among other things, situation, competences, overview, inspiration and initiative.
Even so, there is more need than ever for individual personal leadership development. In particular, there is a need for leadership from individuals who can and will break with the still-dominant leadership mindset and approach of the past. It is demanding, but research shows that so-called personal vertical development increases the chance of succeeding.
Until now, knowledge about personal vertical development in leadership has largely been overlooked, but ideas and insights from vertical development are now gaining strong momentum. This can be seen in books such as Laloux’s Re-inventing Organizations (2014) and Robert Kegan’s An Everyone Culture (2017).
In his research, Harvard professor Robert Kegan has identified and described five stages of personal development. They describe the shifting ways in which we construct meaning in our lives. Each stage brings a new way of constructing our self-identity. The way we engage in relationships also changes. Our mental capacity for abstraction and for seeing connections develops as well. Each new stage increases our ability to handle more perspectives, greater complexity and faster change.
The first two stages develop through childhood and adolescence. Some people remain stuck as adults in the second stage, the so-called ‘self-sovereign mind’. Mentally, they have a limited ability to think abstractly and judge things in black and white without nuance. Emotionally and practically, they orient themselves mainly around their own needs and wishes. They can therefore come across as opportunistic and self-absorbed. Think of the typical teenager.
Most people, however, have fully or partly developed Kegan’s third stage by the time they enter the ranks of adults. At least in a society such as the Danish one. With a so-called ‘socialised mind’, you become mentally able to think abstractly and in terms of principles. Your emotional life is also more complex and nuanced. You can take the perspective of others and see yourself through their eyes. This makes you able to internalise society’s general cultural norms as your own. Your self-understanding is characterised by loyalty to the values and roles that apply in the communities you are part of. The ‘socialised mind’ is the key to creating team players who act responsibly and conscientiously: also when no one is watching and checking.
In organisations where goals, roles and lines of authority are reasonably well aligned, the ‘socialised mind’ can thrive, including in leadership positions. It does run into difficulty, however, when ambiguity and complexity in roles, responsibilities and direction increase. When you have to navigate between external stakeholders whose needs and expectations are contradictory, trouble arises: it is as if you have an internal board of directors with many equally weighted voices that cannot reach agreement. You become stuck and need a ruling or an answer you can hold on to. The personal development need here is to step up as chair of your own internal board. That is Kegan’s fourth stage.
The ‘self-authoring mind’ is, to put it simply, about becoming yourself. You are no longer defined and governed by external norms and other people’s expectations. You have established your own inner compass. You are the author of your own self-understanding and identity. You have a sense of being master of your own emotional life. It is no longer ‘your fault’ that I become angry or upset. It is a result of the way I interpret and react to your behaviour.
The fourth stage makes it possible to choose your own response rather than feeling like a victim of circumstances. The self-authoring standpoint can hold loyalties and relationships with others at arm’s length. From there, it can weigh them up and attempt to reconstruct them if desirable. Mentally, the self-authoring mind also makes a broader overview possible. You are able to ‘go up in the helicopter’, as the saying goes. You still retain the ability to see a given matter from several different angles and through different eyes, but you keep your own perspective, which can be informed and nuanced by those of others.
A pleasant sense of self-reliance often comes with the ‘self-authoring stage’. You know what you stand for. You know who you are, how you feel and what you want. In many areas you have created your own experience-based and reflective stance and theory about things. You do not abandon that simply because others disagree or think you are odd. You may, however, change your mind if good arguments or new data come to the table. Of course, you are not always open about your views and perspectives. You want to get your agendas through and achieve your goals. So you can easily take a somewhat tactical approach.
The ‘self-authoring meaning-making structure’ lives up to our conventional expectations of a good leader. Someone who can formulate and step forward with a clear and committed vision and agenda. A beacon with well-considered and clearly expressed views and values that others can navigate by. A person who has a handle on themselves and their own emotional life. Someone who seeks out and listens to different perspectives, data and arguments, but who also has the courage and composure to cut through and make wise, clear decisions.
These leadership qualities will also be needed in the organisations of the future, when the situation calls for them. They are simply not the fundamental form and approach to leadership. Leadership is not assigned to selected individuals in permanent roles, organised in a formal hierarchy. Instead, leadership is distributed and moves between people depending on the situation. Not in an anarchic and chaotic way, but supported by culture, structure, principles and systems. I deal with how that works in a separate article.
The organisations of the future ideally function in such a way that people can thrive regardless of whether their development has reached the fourth stage. But can ‘self-authoring minds’ also found and develop these organisations? Research does not yet have a clear answer to that. My thesis is that founders with ‘self-authoring minds’ can indeed build this kind of organisation. It simply requires that they have ‘self-authored’ a leadership ideology and practice that supports it. They often have an ‘authority’ as owners, founders or perhaps formal CEO. They then use that very authority to insist that they do not always have the last word. They challenge any tendency for leadership culture and practice to fall back towards the conventional hierarchy.
It is more doubtful how well people with a self-authoring mind manage to transform existing organisations. Here they come up against history, habits, vested interests and existing power structures. It is a very demanding field to navigate. The limitation of the ‘self-authoring mind’ is that it maintains control over its own self-understanding and emotional life. Self-identity is also fused with the self-authored ideology. That can be limiting when it comes to giving oneself over more fully to an emergent process. A transformation where the outcome is unknown, and where something new arises precisely because old positions, identities and visions are given up along the way. This particular capacity develops more fully with Kegan’s fifth stage, which is called ‘the self-transforming mind’.
Research shows that it is significantly better at leading cultural and organisational transformation. The development from the fourth to the fifth stage increases people’s ability to juggle several conflicting perspectives at the same time. Self-identity and authority become more mobile and located in co-creation with others. This makes it possible to navigate more creatively and effectively through complex changes and relationships. These are the qualities required in the leadership that leads into the future. Unfortunately, only a few per cent have developed a ‘self-transforming mind’.
At re:lead, we work to help more people develop this capacity. We believe that this strengthens the possibility of spreading the leadership the future is calling for. How that leadership is experienced is described in the next article in the series.
Are you curious about how you can use the insights from ‘vertical development’ in your own development as a leader? At re:lead we offer ‘growth-edge’ interviews and feedback that can help you with exactly that.
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